How Theology Affects Apologetics

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 7.
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This is a passage that I have taught through many times and different contexts have gone to this passage.
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It's such an important section for us as believers to understand.
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Jesus is talking about false teachers and how we know who is a false teacher and He's talking about there will be some who come to Him on the day of judgment and will say, Lord, Lord, did we not do this? Did we not do that? And He'll say, I never knew you.
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And then He gets to verse 24 and from 24 to 27 He talks about building a house.
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And He says there's two ways to build a house.
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You build a house on a rock or you build a house on sand.
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And one works and one doesn't.
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So we're going to read that passage tonight.
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These are the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
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He says, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
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And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.
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And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
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And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it.
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So far we have done two parts in a study of apologetics.
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In our first part we dealt mostly with the nature of apologetics and who we will encounter when needing to make a defense for the faith.
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We addressed the reality that when we speak to the unbeliever the Bible tells us they actually already know that God exists and they are suppressing that truth in unrighteousness and as a result that provides a framework for how we discuss the issue of apologetics.
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We never see the unbeliever as a neutral party but we always see them as one who has the evidence he needs.
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He simply has a moral unwillingness to accept it.
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The Bible says he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.
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Well in our second session of apologetics which took a little longer I think we dealt primarily with the specific questions that unbelievers raise.
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We looked at the claims of the evolutionists who say that God is unnecessary because mankind came about through natural processes of evolution because the universe is run by laws and those laws give us natural processes which create life.
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And we debunked a lot of those claims in our study of that subject.
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We also examined arguments that came against the Bible.
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The most common arguments against the Bible itself.
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The Bible is full of contradictions.
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The Bible has been changed.
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The Bible is without any reason to have any confidence in what it says because of the authorship and things like that.
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And we discussed a long series on that.
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How we got the Bible, where it came from and what it says.
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But as we now draw to a close I want to transition to a different study.
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Because as you note in your handout it says the title of tonight is How Theology Affects Apologetics.
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And I truly believe this.
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If we are really concerned about apologetics and hopefully you'll all remember but if you don't apologetics is defending the faith.
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If we are really concerned about defending the faith we need to understand the faith.
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A lot of times people will ask me and I understand if you've asked me this question I'm not attacking you because I've asked the same thing.
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People ask can you tell me more about Mormonism because I want to talk to Mormons.
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Or can you tell me more about Jehovah Witnesses because I want to talk to Jehovah Witnesses.
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Or can you tell me more about Seventh Day Adventists or whatever anything.
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Any obscure movement or cult group.
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They'll say can you tell me more about it because that's who I want to talk to.
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Now I understand that question and I've had that question before too.
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And I've studied Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses.
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And I've studied cult groups and I've studied false religions like Islam and things like that.
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So I understand the question and I don't think that it's a wrong question.
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But I do want to say this.
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The most important thing that you can do to defend the faith against a Muslim or against a Jehovah Witness or against a Mormon or anything else is to best understand what the faith is.
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That is the best way to defend the faith is to understand what the faith is.
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Now understanding what they believe helps in a conversation.
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And it also helps to be able to point out things that they believe that they sometimes don't even know that they believe.
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Mormons will come to the house and talk to me and I'll say but your book says this.
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And they don't even know.
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And so I'm not saying those things aren't helpful.
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But it's just like this.
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And you've probably all heard me give the illustration before about counterfeiters.
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How does the counterfeiter or how does the people who train people to spot counterfeits, how do they train them? They train them to understand what the genuine looks like.
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They train them to understand all of the marks of a genuine bill.
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Because if you know all of the marks of a genuine bill, then you will always be able to spot the counterfeit because you'll know what's either been added or what's missing.
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Because you know the marks of the original.
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You know what the genuine article is.
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And that's how they train them.
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Because it would be impossible to train somebody to know all the different ways to counterfeit.
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But they could train somebody to know exactly what the genuine article looks like.
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And so as long as you know what the genuine article looks like, then you'll be able to point out that which is counterfeit.
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So a quote that I have, and I think I put it on your notes, is that our theology determines our apologetic.
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Is that on your notes, Dr.
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James White? Okay.
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What Dr.
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White is saying is that how we defend the faith will largely be determined by how we understand the faith.
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How we defend what we believe will be affected by how much we understand about what we believe.
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A good example of this is found in something called theodicy.
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And I say theodicy, I think a lot of people think I'm saying theodicy, like with Homer's Odyssey.
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No, not theodicy, but theodicy.
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Theodicy is the study of the subject of evil and God.
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The subject of the vindication of God's goodness in light of the existence of evil.
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I recently was asked to listen to an atheist who was debating.
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A friend of mine sent me a video to listen to, and I listened.
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It was about a 20-minute presentation by an atheist.
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His entire argument hinged on the idea that people suffer and thus God cannot exist.
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That was essentially his entire argument.
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There is suffering in the world.
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If God is good, he would not allow it.
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If God was powerful, he would do something about it.
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So if God does exist, he's either not good enough to do anything about it, or he's not powerful enough to do anything about it.
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Because God allows evil, he simply cannot be the God that we think exists.
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That was the argument of the atheist.
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I've got to tell you, that particular argument really rings in the ear of the social justice warrior.
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If you're not familiar with that term, it's a relatively modern way of describing the person who is concerned with all of the social justice in the world.
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There are people in countries that are hurting, and there are people in countries that are starving.
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There are people that want to come into this country, and they should be allowed to come into this country, because this country affords them opportunities they don't have elsewhere.
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So there's this push for social justice.
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I want to say this, the Bible does concern itself with justice.
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However, when we start defining justice in different terms for different people, it's no longer justice.
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That's the problem with social justice warriors, is oftentimes it's not justice.
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But that's a topic for another time.
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The point I'm trying to make tonight is that when someone brings up the issue of evil in God, when somebody asks the question, how can God be good and there be evil in the world, before you can even begin to answer that question, you have to understand that is a theological question.
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That question, how you answer that question will tell me what your theology is.
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I'm going to close this, excuse me.
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I've got to tell you something, if you are a Reformed person, meaning that you have, not only you go to a Reformed church, but you're a person who studied Reformed theology and you understand Reformed theology, your answer to the question of theodicy will probably differ greatly from someone who would identify themselves as non-Reformed, or what we would call an Arminian.
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You see, the Arminian answer to the answer of evil in the world has everything to do with free will.
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And that's always the answer.
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And if you hear somebody answer the question of evil in the world with the answer of freedom of the will, then you almost automatically know from what theological bent that person is coming.
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If you hear somebody talk about God having a purpose in all things, even in the evil in the world, typically they're coming from a more Reformed perspective.
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Not always, but again, theology will provide an apologetic.
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How we understand God, how we understand the Bible, will inform how we answer questions.
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Another one, a good one, is on the question of creation.
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I'm just giving examples now of how this works out.
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The question of creation.
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In our first study, or actually in our last study, in our Apologetics 201 course, we talked about young earth creationism versus old earth creationism, and we talked about the differences thereof.
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Both positions argue that they believe the Bible, and they are interpreting it according to a legitimate reading of biblical data, but both are coming to vastly different interpretations.
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So the responses to apologetic arguments are going to be different.
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Your theology of creation is going to make your answer to certain questions different.
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You see, old earth creationists, people like Hugh Ross, would argue that the earth is, in fact, 4.5 billion years old, that the universe is 14 point blah blah blah billion years old, whatever they're calculating now, and he would argue that, yes, the universe is that old.
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And so when asked questions about the Dilophosaurus, or some other dinosaur, his question and answer will be different than that of someone like Ken Ham, who believes that the earth is not as old as modern science would suggest.
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He believes that the earth has been around somewhere in the vicinity of thousands of years, rather than millions.
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There's no hard-set date, but if you had to nail him down, I'd probably say about 10,000 years, which for some people would seem absolutely ludicrous.
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But that's the argument of the young earth creationists.
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So when you ask him about the Diplodocus, or the Dilophosaurus, he's going to say they were on the ark with Noah.
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Is that right? Or they could have died in the flood, but you understand what I'm saying.
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He makes the argument that dinosaurs and man lived alongside one another.
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You went to the Creation Museum, right, Mr.
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Paul? Was there not pictures and models of dinosaurs? People say, well, how do you get a big old dinosaur on an ark? Well, you put a baby on there.
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That's how you do it.
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That's the answer.
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But you understand how your theology is going to affect your apologetic.
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Hugh Ross and Ken Ham are going to stand on the same street corner preaching the gospel, but they're going to answer the questions that the unbeliever has differently.
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This is the point of the whole lesson tonight.
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Theology drives apologetics.
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What you believe about what the Bible says will drive how you answer the question of the unbeliever.
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And it's every area.
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I've got a couple other examples.
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How about this one? Here's a great one.
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End times.
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Now you know this is not a subject that I spend a lot of time in.
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Well, yeah, it is a can of worms.
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It is a five-gallon bucket of worms.
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And when you open it, they go every direction.
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But let's say for the sake of argument that there are differing views on the end times in this room.
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I'm going to say it's not for the sake of argument.
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It's absolutely true.
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I know there's differing views in this room, and that's okay.
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Will that not affect how we answer questions about what's happening in the world around us? Dispensational premillennialism versus covenant theology understands the role of Israel and the church quite differently.
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One believes that Israel and the church are two distinct entities in the program of God.
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God having a plan for Israel and a plan for the church.
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That's called dispensational premillennialism.
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That God, when Jesus returns, will have a time where Israel will be reestablished and Christ will rule and reign from Jerusalem for a thousand years.
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That's the typical view.
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Premillennialism.
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That we're still waiting on the millennium to come.
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And when it comes, Jesus will rule and reign from Jerusalem for a thousand years.
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Am I describing that correctly, Richard? That is normally preceded by some view of the rapture of the church.
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Some people believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, meaning that the church will be taken out seven years before Jesus returns and sets up his kingdom.
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That's the seven-year tribulation.
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Many of you are familiar with that.
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And that seven years is preceded by a rapture.
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If you've ever seen the movie Left Behind, that movie Left Behind is based on the idea that the rapture will happen and planes are falling from the sky and all of these things are happening because the believers just vanished.
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Right? And so that particular view carries with it theological connotations for answering questions.
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When the unbeliever asks a question about where Russia plays into the history of man.
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Well, Russia is Gog and Magog.
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Didn't you know that? I mean, I'm not saying that's the answer.
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I'm saying that's one of the things that you may hear someone say.
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And where this comes really into play is when people come to ask me a question about something and I provide an answer they're not ready for.
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Because I might not provide an answer from that perspective.
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Might not even be an unbeliever at this point.
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Might be a believer asking a question.
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But it happens with unbelievers.
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I had an unbeliever message me a few weeks ago asking me questions.
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And I say, when I say unbeliever, the questions that were coming, I believe this person is an unbeliever based upon their behavior.
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But they were asking the questions because they had heard all these things.
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And they wanted to know.
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And I said, but that's not the position I take.
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I can't argue for a position I don't take.
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You understand? There's two other millennial positions I don't really want to get into.
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So there's amillennialism, which says essentially the millennium is representative of the age of the church, which exists now.
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And there's postmillennialism, which says that the millennium will come prior to the coming of Christ.
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And it will be preceded by a reign of Christian, essentially Christianity throughout the world.
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The world will become Christianized prior to the return of Christ.
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Typically, here's the way you can remember them.
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Premillennialism tend to be somewhat negative about the future.
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It's only going to get worse, right? Postmillennialism thinks it's going to get better.
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It's only going to get better.
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There's this sort of optimism, right? So you sort of have pessimism with premillennialists and optimism with postmillennialists.
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And amillennialists just consider themselves to be realists.
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It's going to stay bad and good.
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It just depends on where you are.
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So there's difference.
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But you understand how that could affect how you would answer questions from an unbeliever? What do you think Donald Trump plays into the book of Revelation? Do you think America is even mentioned in Revelation? Oh, that's a question.
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A lot of people will say America is not even mentioned, which means she's not going to be here when the end comes.
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You see? You see how that would play into a conversation with an unbeliever? And you see how your theology affects your apologetics? Again, I'm not here to have a debate about end times tonight.
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I'm just saying these things affect how you would answer questions.
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A good example of how this works out in real life.
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Pat Robertson, I've told this story before, but some of you may not have heard it.
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Pat Robertson was having a debate, or not a debate, having a conversation with a man who was a Jew.
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And the Jewish man said, I don't believe in Jesus, am I going to hell? And Pat Robertson said, well no, you're a Jew.
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And the Bible says all Israel will be saved.
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That's false teaching.
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But that's a hyper, and I would say an incorrect interpretation of dispensational theology.
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I'm not saying Pat Robertson is an example of dispensationalism.
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I'm saying it's a hyper bad place that some people go to.
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Essentially saying Jews have a different way of salvation than the church.
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That's a problem.
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Yes? Somebody say? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you had.
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Probably the most severe example of how theology affects apologetics is when it comes to the subject of salvation.
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Because what is the ultimate goal of apologetics? The ultimate goal of apologetics is defending the faith against someone who does not believe, so as to tear down the walls of disbelief, and to open them up bare before the Savior, so that they would cry out to the Lord for salvation.
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I mean, ultimately we want to see this person get saved.
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I don't sit at the booth with the fishing hole, with people walking by handing out tracts, in hopes that they're going to not believe.
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I don't sit there handing out gospel tracts in hopes that they're going to tear them up and throw them away.
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I hope that the Lord will open their heart and they'll believe.
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And I know that one of the ways that God uses to save people is by the proclamation of truth, and the overcoming of their objections.
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You say, does God really use that? Yes, Paul says, we destroy arguments.
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When somebody argues against the cross, against Christ, we destroy that.
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We tear it down.
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What do we put in its place? The truth.
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And we lay somebody bare facing the truth.
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And then it's up to God if they're going to believe.
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It's up to God to open the heart to believe.
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But we tear down those arguments.
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You see, those arguments for them are like a shield, protecting their heart that's already exposed, because their heart knows the truth.
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And they've got these shields up.
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And every time we tear down one of those arguments, we're tearing down one of their shields until eventually their heart is laid bare for the spear of the gospel to come in and pierce their heart.
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So that's the goal.
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So if there's anything we need to get right, if there's anything we need to know for sure that we understand, if we're going to be doing apologetics, is we need to understand the doctrine of salvation.
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So as I said, this is transitioning to another series of lessons.
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I want to teach on some basic doctrines.
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And one of the doctrines is the doctrine of salvation.
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Do we understand it? When it comes to the subject of salvation, there are two positions which are dangerously heretical and widely divergent, but also hugely popular.
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There's two positions that are both equally wrong, but they're wildly popular.
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What are they? Legalism.
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Hugely wrong.
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Very popular.
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What's on the other side? Huh? Liberalism.
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I like to use the word licentiousness, but we can say because liberalism has such a political tie.
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Actually, what I was going to say is easy believism, but if I wanted to keep with the L, I would say licentiousness.
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But for the sake of this, I'll say easy believism.
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I don't think I spelled believism wrong.
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Licentiousness or easy believism.
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What is legalism? Legalism says that salvation is dependent upon your meeting a certain legal requirement.
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Some type of law must be held for you to be saved, and it depends on the group.
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Hebrew roots says that unless you're living as the Jewish law demands, the Old Testament law, unless you're living essentially a kosher life, then you are not saved.
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Seventh-day Adventists, I mentioned earlier, won't necessarily say that you're not saved, but that you're not pleasing God if you're not worshiping on Saturday, if you're not keeping the kosher dietary laws, if you're not being very strict in your holding to particular Old Testament laws.
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There are others.
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You've probably all been to churches where if your hair is a certain length or not a certain length, or if your skirt is a certain length or not a certain length, or if you're wearing, you know, Jackie wore shorts to church.
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Well, how dare you? I have a great story.
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There was a pastor, and actually I may tell the story again Sunday, so you'll get a twofer.
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Because on Sunday I'm going to talk about causing a brother to stumble.
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Back in the 60s and 70s, in the more fundamental Baptist churches, men didn't wear beards.
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It was just, you just didn't do that.
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And it was associated with hippies and things like that.
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So beards were just, there was a no-no.
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And a pastor of a very popular Baptist church decided to grow a beard.
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And he was a seminary professor of a minister that I listened to, and I've heard the story secondhand, but it's so good and it has to be true.
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He said a lady in the church that he was preaching in, he was a guest minister at a church, and he went out as he was leaving, the lady walked up to him and said, your brother so-and-so, you have to, I demand that you shave that beard because it is causing me to stumble.
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And his response was, unless it's encouraging you to grow a beard, it can't possibly be causing you to stumble.
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Which I thought was the best answer in the history of that particular conversation.
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Unless it's causing you to want to do it, it's not causing you to stumble.
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That's what causing somebody to stumble means.
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It means you're encouraging them to do something that would violate their conscience.
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But you understand, though, how that is a form of legalism.
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And legalism has a hold on so many and so many churches.
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And the problem with legalism is this, it changes with each church.
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If you're a legalist and you go to the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church and they tell you you can't dance and you can't chew and you can't go out with boys that do, and then you move to another Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church and it's got a different set of those rules.
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And now you understand that the laws change.
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It's like nailing Jell-O to the wall.
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Legalism is different because it's usually determined by subjective perspective.
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So what's the other side? If we have legalism which says that salvation is dependent on you holding certain legal requirements, what's the other side? Easy-believism, or what did you say? Antinomianism, that's why I like you.
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Antinomianism means to be opposed to law.
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Salvation produces no tangible moral results in the life of the believer.
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It is simply an intellectual acceptance of certain facts.
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How many of you have ever heard the phrase, you need to accept Jesus? Have you ever heard me say it? Have you ever heard me say it? Everybody bow your heads and close your eyes, and if you're ready to accept Jesus, repeat after me.
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Oh yeah, you've all heard it.
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I've heard it.
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There's the idea of accepting Jesus.
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Where did that word even come from? Is that in the Bible? They would argue and say, well, you have to receive Jesus because John 1 says, Jesus came to his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become children of God.
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So they can switch it for the word received.
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And if you ever hear me talking about someone taking Jesus as their Savior, that's what I say, I use the word received.
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Never say accept.
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Because the idea of accepting something is typically a mental thing.
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I accept it as true.
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But the problem with that, accepting Jesus is true, doesn't save you.
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Because a lot of people know Jesus is true and know the claims of Christ are true, but do not trust him as Savior and do not serve him as Lord.
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Yeah.
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What do we talk about in Matthew 7? He says simply, he says, many will come to me that day and say, Lord, Lord, have we not done this, that and the other? And yet he'll say, I never knew you.
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Right.
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So easy believism denies the power of the gospel to change a life.
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Legalism denies salvation as a gift that comes from God without any requirements.
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And you see, both are wrong.
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When legalism says that you have a requirement to fulfill before you can be saved, they're setting up something, they're adding to the gospel, is what Paul says.
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And when easy believism says the gospel lacks the power to save someone, not only by changing their mind, but changing their heart, that's a problem, too.
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How is this related to apologetics? Well, apologetics is associated with evangelism, as I said before.
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And I've heard people do this.
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I've heard people have these conversations.
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When I hear people telling people how to be saved, here's how it goes.
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What you need to do is you need to stop drinking, smoking, gambling, and you need to start going to church every Sunday and giving your money to the church, and then you'll be saved.
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That's legalism.
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Because you've given people a list.
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Do these things and you can get saved.
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Now, I might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you understand what I'm saying.
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Other side of the coin.
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What I want you to do is simply agree that Jesus died for your sins and repeat this prayer, and then you'll be saved, no matter what happens afterward and no matter if you have a changed heart or a changed life.
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I've told this story, and I swear it's the truth.
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I was listening to the radio when the guy said it here in Jacksonville, a very popular preacher, if I said his name, most of you would know him.
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He said very clearly, believe in Jesus tonight, come forward and accept him.
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Even if you decide you don't like him, you've still got him.
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Unbelievable when I heard it.
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I was driving my dad's old green Dodge diesel truck, and I was on Merrill Road.
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I know where I was, I know what I was driving, and I almost drove it off the road.
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That doesn't prove that it really happened, but in my mind, it's connected to an event.
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Oh, yeah.
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As I said, if I said his name, you'd all know him.
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So ultimately, we have two issues.
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Last year at the fair, Dale, you remember our group beside us? We had a group beside us that politely but sternly asked Dale to stop coming over there.
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Because we had an idea.
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We were going back to the fair this year, and I asked them not to put us next to them.
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Not because I minded being next to them, but because they didn't like us next to them.
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Because our guys were handing out tracks, and their guy was sitting behind a table.
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When people would get tracks from us, they wouldn't take tracks from them.
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Dale would break that line of demarcation that he wasn't supposed to break.
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The guy said, would you stop coming over here? Mike Collier and I looked into a little bit about their ministry.
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Their ministry is just that.
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They go to fairs.
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They give out gospel tracks.
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But if you read their gospel tracks, it's independent, fundamentalist, Baptist.
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It's very much legalism.
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I'm not going to sit there and argue with them.
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But how do we know someone's theology when they start telling us how to get saved? Oh yeah, they would tell you how many people prayed the prayer.
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And they told us, yes, last year we had 300 decisions.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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That's their spot.
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Not on the same team.
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I've been in groups where I was with believers and unbelievers, and the subject of salvation come up, and I have literally cringed in my seat as I heard the believers attempt to share the gospel and either give legalism or easy believism.
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I very rarely heard a gospel presentation.
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This is why I say, and it didn't come from me, but this is why I continue to say, theology matters.
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It will drive everything we do, even how we share our faith and how we defend it.
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Your theology will affect everything, including how you tell another person how they can be saved.
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In fact, you can know all about creationism, the history of the Bible, but if you cannot tell a person how to be saved, why does it matter? So if we're going to argue for biblical truth, we need to be certain that we have understood what the Bible says and make our arguments from Scripture.
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I gave you three blanks today.
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Tonight I do want to give you what those three blanks are, because I believe when it comes to being good theologians, we need to start by understanding theology, and there's three types of theology that we should become familiar with.
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And in our study of doctrine and theology, we're going to go over these a little bit more in depth, but tonight I'll give you what they are.
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The first one is biblical theology, and I know you might be thinking, well, can there be another kind? Because shouldn't it all be biblical? Well, yes, but in this sense, there's three types or three methods of studying theology.
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The first is biblical theology.
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The second is systematic, systematic theology.
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Anybody want to take a stab at the third one? Does anybody know what the third one is? Chaotic.
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No, not chaotic.
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Correct.
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Well, hopefully you would be correct in all three of them.
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The last one is historical theology, historical theology.
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And I'll give you an idea of how those work out.
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Biblical theology is the study of biblical doctrines arranged according to their chronology within the Bible itself.
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Now, is there things that we learn in Genesis that we learn more about in other books? Couldn't we say that when it comes to things like the doctrine of the Trinity, we have more information than Moses did? Yes, because we have more of God's revelation about that subject.
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In fact, I would argue that the doctrine of the Trinity, though veiled in the Old Testament, is not explicitly taught in the Old Testament.
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It's explicitly taught in the New Testament.
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There's one God in three persons.
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Those three persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Those three are one, and they share the essence or being of God.
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That is clearly taught in the New Testament.
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It is veiled in the Old Testament.
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We see things like in the very first book of the Bible, the very first chapter, it talks about God made us in His image or let us make man in our image.
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There's a sense of the plurality of God there.
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There's all kinds of references there.
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We see God is raining fire from heaven while He's eating under the oak trees of Mamre with Abraham.
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So we see there that distinction of the person of God and the person of Jesus Christ who's there with Abraham while God is in heaven raining down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.
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So there's an essence.
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We can see the Trinity veiled, but not explicit.
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So biblical theology deals with the theology that comes in the Bible from the books of the Bible.
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So you understand, like if we were going to do a biblical study of the biblical theology of Genesis, we would limit ourselves to what are we learning about God in Genesis.
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You understand how that works? Or if we say we're going to limit ourselves to studying what do we learn about God in Paul's writings.
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The Pauline epistles, we outline that.
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That's biblical theology.
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That is a great way to do exegesis, studying the text.
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Drawing only what's there, not including anything that's not there.
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Pulling information out that's there.
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It's a wonderful way to study doctrine.
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But it is limited because when you do biblical theology, you are limiting yourself to whatever area you're in.
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Systematic theology is different.
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Systematic theology is the study of biblical doctrines arranged according to subject.
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So now instead of looking at Genesis and what does Genesis tell me about God, I ask the question, what is God's nature? And now I get the whole Bible and I put it in a systematic approach to the nature of God.
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God is one.
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God is also three.
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Two different categories.
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One in nature, three in person.
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He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present.
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You see, these are things like omnipresence, omniscience, all those things.
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Those all come from systematic theology.
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That's my specialty.
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I don't want to say that.
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That sounds weird.
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That's the area that I've spent most time in in the last 15 years of ministry study, has been studying systematic theology.
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Because my favorite teacher is R.C.
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Sproul, and I believe he was one of the greatest systematic theologians of all time.
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And so that's been my home, is studying systematic theology.
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Systematic theology comes with heads.
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You have theology proper, the study of God and his nature.
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Christology, the study of Jesus Christ.
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Pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit.
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Ecclesiology, the study of the church.
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So you go down the list.
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You have all of these different areas, and you categorize each subject, and then you begin to collect the verses that deal with that subject.
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And you keep them within their context, but you use them in the broader context of what does this mean in regard to this particular subject.
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So that's systematic theology.
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What then is historical theology? If we know biblical theology is taking the Bible chronologically, if we know systematic theology is taking the Bible by subject, what then is historical theology? Historical theology is actually a study of history and theology together, looking at how the church has recognized and determined certain theological paradigms down through the ages, such as the doctrine of the Trinity with the historic councils of the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon, things like that.
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How did these councils affect how the church understood certain things? And how did those councils affirm certain decisions about doctrine and theology within the church? Some of the most important historical things that we can study are the creeds and confessions of the church.
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Several years ago I did a series where I went through some of the most important creeds and confessions of the church, like the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, even something as far back as the Didache, which was one of the early writings of the church that was not part of the Bible, but it was an early document that talks about how the church operated.
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Did you know that the Didache says that when they would baptize, they would baptize somebody three times? They would dunk them three times.
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Name of the Father, name of the Son, name of the Holy Spirit.
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And it also says this.
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It says if they didn't have enough water, they would pour.
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That would make a Baptist shudder, but it does.
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It says if they didn't have enough water to dunk a person, that they would pour water on them.
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That was as early as the first century.
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I believe that the Didache could possibly go as far back as into the first century, or certainly second century.
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So as early as that, the church is already having the question, what do we do if we don't have a pool? What do we do if we're not near water? And they're answering that question.
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Historic theology, right? That's where you learn more about the faith.
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So there's all kinds of ways to learn theology, but it begins, of course, with Scripture.
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And it ends with Scripture.
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If something we learn in history violates Scripture, we know it's wrong.
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If something we determine in systematic theology doesn't line up with Scripture, then we know it's wrong.
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Or if we read something in Genesis and what we understand here contradicts something that we know is in Romans or in Galatians, then we know we've missed it somewhere.
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We've either misunderstood one or both.
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My wife and I had this conversation earlier because on Sunday I'm going to be preaching 1 Corinthians 8.
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1 Corinthians 8, Paul says that the person who is weak in the faith doesn't eat meat offered to idols, but actually eating meat offered to idols is really not a bad thing because eating meat offered to idols is there is no such thing as an idol.
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Idols aren't real.
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They're figments of people's imagination.
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So it really isn't going to hurt you to eat meat offered to idols.
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But if you go to Acts 15 in the first council of the church in the council of Jerusalem, one of the things that they said was don't eat meat offered to idols.
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So is Paul disagreeing with the church council? Is Scripture disagreeing with Scripture? Well, no, it's not.
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But why not? Come Sunday, you'll find out.
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I like doing that.
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No, but that's that's these are questions that take a little deeper study.
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All right.
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So we've gone as far as we're going to go tonight.
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Let's let's end with just drawing back to our first statement tonight.
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We looked at the Scripture.
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The Scripture tells us that we are to build our houses on the rock.
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The rock is Jesus Christ.
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He said, whoever hears my word and does them is like a man who builds his house on a rock.
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Beloved, we need to build our apologetic on the rock of solid theology.
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We need to build our defense of the faith on having a right understanding of the faith.
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So my goal will be.
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I know we only have a few weeks before we take our break in August, and I don't know what all we're going to do there.
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But certainly when we come back, we're going to dive into a longer study of some of the most important doctrines of Scripture.
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I don't know exactly the outline we're going to take yet.
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But over my month of break where I take some time to read and study and just have some personal time, I'm going to be outlining some things for us to do.
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I think it's going to be a very profitable time of study together.
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So let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for tonight.
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I thank you for your word.
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I pray that it's been an encouragement to your people.
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And I do pray, Lord, that we would understand that our that our apologetics, our defense of the faith begins with our understanding of the faith.
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Lord, I pray in the weeks and months to come that we would have a better understanding of the faith that you have given to us through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.